Strings
by emblah01
Summary: It takes a certain amount of crap to make someone crack. Annabeth finally reached that point. And all because of Helen. Rated T for language and angst. Angst/Hurt. Minor Comfort, I guess... Not really.


_**I just had a huge fight with my dad... He started calling me lazy, a pig, fat, stupid, etc. and made comments about my Papa and my Aunts and blah, blah, blah. I just, I need to write. I need to just let it out. This was the result.**_

_**This is inspired by horse-crazy girl13's 'Family' which is awesome and amazing and W.O.W., but hopefully it isn't the same. It also isn't nearly as good.**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians.**_

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If there was one thing Annabeth hated more than the girls at school who talked about nothing more than boys and makeup, it was Helen.

Helen was her dad's wife, but not her mom. They had married when she was six. She was a short, thin Asian woman with dark brown eyes and long brown hair she always wore in a bun.

She was usually civil towards her, but today, apparently Annabeth had done something wrong.

"You're so stupid!" she screamed, spit flying around her mouth. "Did you not know that that pasta was for supper?"

"I didn't know, okay?" she yelled back. "I'm so effing sorry for ruining your perfect little supper!"

"This isn't about the supper! This is about you being a pig. Honestly, do you have any idea how much we spend on food?" Helen cried, throwing her hands in the air dramatically. "Maybe if you actually _talked_ to me for once, we wouldn't have this problem and I wouldn't have to make more pasta!"

"There was a handful left, if that! You would have had to make some more anyway! I ate it, because I was at Social Justice Club until five and I hadn't eaten since lunch, so sorry! And I don't talk to you because whenever we do, we end up fighting! I don't want to live like that."

"Well, neither do I, Annabeth! I don't deserve this! It's ridiculous. You don't seem to understand that _I_ am the adult in this household. _I_ am older than you! I am smarter than you! I am your mother, therefore I am right!" Helen spat.

"You are not my mom," Annabeth growled. Anger burned inside her. She had to get out. She had to get _out._

Helen placed her hands on her hips. "Well, fine! Then you're not my daughter! When I married your dad, I decided that I was going to take him as is, strings attached! Including you."

Annabeth swallowed. She felt her eyes burn. She tried to form words, but Helen seemed to have said all that was needed.

That was all she was: a burden, a responsibility, a string.

"Now," Helen said through clenched teeth, "I have to take the twins to their soccer practice. I don't want to see you when I get home. At least be in your bedroom, or something. I just don't want to see you."

Annabeth glowered at her and tried to form some sort of retaliation. But Helen had already called the boys and drove off.

She ran up the stairs to her room and threw herself onto the bed. She felt the tears well up in her eyes and let out a sob. It echoed lonely through the empty house. She let out another. And another. And soon the house was filled with the sounds of her sobs.

She curled her fingers around the thick, grey quilt and let out a scream, muffled by her pillow.

She slammed her fist on her alarm clock and it started playing music. Sad, lonely music, just like Annabeth felt.

She felt the tears wet her blankets and let out another scream. Annabeth slid off of the bed and curled into a ball, pressing her palms to her eyes. Her vision dotted red and purple in the blackness.

"God, please!" she sobbed. Her voice sounded broken and raw. "Please, help me feel! Please, please, please! Please just help me feel something!" Her throat felt raw, her vision was dotted with black.

She felt a surge of anger through her and slammed her palm onto the ground. Sharp jolts of pain crawled up her arm her hand felt like she had placed it on a hot stovetop. She repeated this until her hand was numb.

_I want to die,_ she thought helplessly. _I don't want to live here. I want to die._

She grabbed a piece of loose-leaf paper from her nightstand and a pen. She began to write in messy cursive, the ink bleeding down the paper from her tears.

_Regret - to wish something to have not happened; to rue. Synonyms: grief, shame, stupidity, ignorance, sadness, loneliness, etc._

_You say you want me gone?_

_Goodbye._

She signed her name on the bottom and placed it on her pillow with shaky hands. She grabbed her sketchpad and pencil case from her drawer and stuck a pencil behind her ear. She put in her earphones and walked out of her room. She made sure to grab her keys and her wallet, shoving them in her back pocket. She locked the door and started down the sidewalk.

The evening light filled the neighborhood. The sky was tinged pink and purple and orange. The cracked concrete crunched under her Converse-clad feet. She looked both ways and ran across the street, the sketchbook still tucked under her arm.

She arrived at a small park, overgrown and slowly turning yellow from the fall weather. The path turned from the dirty grey of sidewalk to the dark black of fresh pavement. She walked through the park and sat down at a wooden bench. She selected a song and began to draw.

She sketched buildings, tall ones, short ones, magnificently complicated ones. Once she was bored of that, she changed to sketching the things around her.

She noticed a fuzzy, yellow-and-black bee buzzing around a light pink rose. She guided her pencil across the page, darkening and lightening the grey drawn on the paper. Soon, her eyes dried up and she lost herself in her work. She proceeded to do the same again, only this time of a magpie sitting on a tree branch.

She was so consumed in her work, she didn't feel someone sit down beside her.

She jumped and turned to face the person.

Helen was sitting a few inches beside her, wringing her hands in her lap nervously. Annabeth narrowed her eyes and turned back to her sketch. Her fingers felt stiff from the cold.

Annabeth hadn't noticed it beforehand, but the streetlamp above her was now light and the sun had almost completely set. The sky was now a dark blue in colour.

Helen sighed and Annabeth rolled her eyes. She was angry now. So angry. How dare Helen say those things to her, and then come and sit down beside her, as if to apologize and just _sigh?_ How dare she call herself her mother? She was no mother.

A mother didn't say that they didn't want to see their child when they got home.

A mother didn't call her child stupid, or fat, or pathetic.

A mother didn't say that her child would amount to nothing.

A mother didn't wish that their child hadn't been born.

Annabeth had heard these things multiple times over the past eight years Helen had been living with them.

"Are you coming home tonight?" she asked softly, as if Annabeth was as breakable as glass.

Annabeth pressed her pencil against the paper. The lead broke off. She dug around in her pencil case until she found a sharpener and started to sharpen her pencil angrily.

"You need to come home tonight, Annabeth. You're only fourteen; you can't spend the night out in the streets."

She took in an angry breath of air through her nose and ran her tongue across the top row of her teeth. "Go away," she said shortly and scratched away at her drawing.

"Look, Annabeth… I'm sorry, okay? I shouldn't have said those mean things to you tonight. That was uncalled for," Helen pleaded.

Annabeth merely scoffed and continued drawing. She glided the pencil along the outer edge of someone's eye lightly, shading it in.

"Please answer me, Annabeth."

"Go. Away," Annabeth said simply.

Helen snatched the sketchbook away and set it on the ground. Annabeth's hands shook with anger.

"Give me my book," she seethed and narrowed her grey eyes.

"No," Helen said, "not until you start talking."

"What is there to say?" Annabeth asked. "I think you made it perfectly clear what you want from me. You want me gone. You want a perfect fucking family, but I was the smudge on your paper. Well, guess what? You've finally erased me. I get it, now. I understand." She stood up and walked away, down the newly paved pathway.

_Burden, stupid, annoying, responsibility, string. Burden, stupid, annoying, responsibility, string._ _Burden, stupid, annoying, responsibility, string._ _Burden, stupid, annoying, responsibility, string._

She repeated these words over and over in her mind as she followed the path. Slowly, her anger receeded and she started to feel sad again.

She had made the loop around and saw that Helen was still sitting on the park bench. She was flipping through the pages of Annabeth's sketchbook, studying each one, looking impressed.

Annabeth felt her cheeks flame in embarrassment. She snatched it off of her lap and set it on top of her pencil case.

"You're very talented," Helen remarked softly.

"Yeah, well," Annabeth said, "you wouldn't care."

Helen sighed again. "I do care, Annabeth. I do."

"If you cared, you wouldn't call me stupid, or fat, or worthless. You wouldn't wish that I wasn't born."

Helen squeezed her eyes shut. "I said those things out of anger. I never meant them."

"But you did," she said quietly and felt tears prickle in her eyes.

"I didn't," Helen insisted. "I swear to God, I didn't."

They were silent for a moment. Helen opened the sketchbook again and opened it to the page Annabeth had last been drawing on.

"Who is this?" she asked and pointed to the woman Annabeth had been drawing.

She looked a lot like Annabeth in some respects, but different. She had high, prominent cheekbones, and soft features. Her hair had the same bouncy curl to it, but it was darker.

"That's my mom," she whispered. She sounded pathetic, even to herself.

Helen nodded. "I understand. You don't want me to be your mom." Annabeth nodded and scuffed the ground with the toe of her shoe. "Okay," Helen said. "Listen, I get it if you don't want to talk to me tonight, but, please come home. Your dad is worried sick and the twins were almost in tears when they found out that you were gone. You don't have to talk to any of us. You can spend the evening in your room, but _please_ come home."

Annabeth was silent. She stared at the ground. Miniscule insects crawled around her shoes. Finally, she nodded. She gathered her stuff and tucked it under her arm.

Together, the two walked down the dimly light path. In the darkness, Annabeth whispered three sole words: "I forgive you."

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_**Okay, please review. I'm having a super crappy day and I just need something to make me smile. Okay, that sounded really pathetic and attention-seeking. Just, please review?**_

_**I love you guys so much.**_

_**-Lou**_


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